Winner of the Hubert Butler Essay Prize 2021

Alison Williams

Is this year’s winner of the Hubert Butler Essay Prize for her essay

“During the plague I came into my own" (Anthony Hecht). Who or what benefited from Covid-19?

Roy Foster, Chair of the judging panel said, “Alison Williams addresses the question of who profited from Covid-19 with insight, wit and compassion. She connects the pandemic’s effects to universal issues of communication, privilege and vulnerability, demonstrating the accomplished essayist’s ability to illuminate large themes by scaling up the everyday - very much in the tradition of Hubert Butler, whom this Prize commemorates.”

Upon hearing the news Alison Williams said, “Winning the Hubert Butler Essay Prize means so much to me on so many different levels, but two in particular: As a self-defined European Scot, it is a joyful experience to be joined once again with the honourable and ancient lineage of European-ness and European values that Hubert Butler espoused and promoted. Then, to have my writing recognised publicly, in such a prestigious setting, is to know beyond doubt that the work is worth the doing. Words cast spells, and I hope that the words of this essay reach out to others and cast good spells.

And it is a joyful experience indeed to find myself in such excellent good company. My heartfelt thanks for their imagination and energy in creating and supporting this prize go to the Kilkenny Arts Festival, HEART, and the Essay Prize itself, for giving me the meaty subject matter to work with."

Alison Williams is a visual artist and ‘late-onset academic’, whose 2013 PhD thesis proposed a visuo-spatial grammar of creative workplaces. Co-editor of BITE: Recipes for remarkable research (2014) and EqualBITE: Gender equality in higher education (2017), she has written and presented extensively on the creative process, and has published in journals as diverse as Regenerative Medicine and Business Innovation and Disruption by Design. She is currently working on Between the mountain and the tree: A journey of wilding women, and growing an international community of wilding women.

In a former life she designed glasswork for Freddie Mercury and Dustin Hoffman, ran an arts centre for amateur painters, and was a consultant in creativity to multinationals.

Read Alison’s winning essay HERE

John Banville, Honorary Patron of the Prize said, "Alison Williams's marvellous essay is a worthy winner, one that surely Hubert Butler would have approved. It is warm, witty, unapologetic and - for once the cliché is entirely apposite - life-affirming. I offer her my heartiest congratulations."

Sebastian Barry said on presenting the award: “Here we have now a beautifully conceived and important essay prize in his name, not only to honour him, and bring some homage to the very act and art of essay writing, but to honour this year’s winner, whose essay is moving, deeply engaged, fundamentally heroic, and unashamedly positive. In a time seared by negative and negating information, it lights up some nearly derelict synaptic circuits. This singular triumph is by Alison Williams. I am privileged to present her with the Hubert Butler Essay Prize for 2021.”

Olga Barry, Festival Director, Kilkenny Arts Festival said, “Kilkenny Arts Festival is honoured to continue its support of the Hubert Butler Essay Prize, 2021. We’re grateful to Jeremy O’Sullivan, for his stellar work in establishing this important recognition of essay-writing in Butler’s name. We’re particularly grateful to the judging panel for their time and energy and to Julia and Dick Crampton and their family for their ongoing encouragement and support. We heartily congratulate Alison and the runners up for their fine work. Butler’s legacy is alive throughout the civic and cultural life of Kilkenny and indeed the nation – this prize in his name is an important part of this legacy.”

The prize was judged by Catriona Crowe, Roy Foster (Chair), Nicholas Grene, Eva Hoffman and Barbara Schwepcke.

Joint runners-up are: Manus Charleton and Conor Matthews.

Manus Charleton has taught ethics and politics in the Institute of Technology, Sligo. He wrote the textbook Ethics for Social Care in Ireland: Philosophy and Practice. His essays, short fiction, and a short memoir have been published in Irish Pages, a Journal of Contemporary Writing. His review essays have been published in The Dublin Review of Books. He has also had short pieces published on the Brainstorm website of the Irish national radio and television station (RTE), and an essay published on Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s website Religion & Ethics. His writing interests include looking at current events in the light of ethical and philosophical ideas. He is also interested in the work of writers and artists and has had pieces published on Marcel Proust, Seamus Heaney, Edvard Munch and Mark Rothko. He was a joint runner-up in the Hubert Butler essay prize in 2019 for an essay on the question ‘Where does a citizen of the world belong?’   

“As a master of the essay form and humanitarian activist, Hubert Butler ‘spoke truth to power’ in an open and engaging style. His example is inspiring and necessary now more than ever in a time when partisan emotive assertion is supplanting evidence-based judgement and respect for difference in public discourse. My thanks to the organisers, supporters and judges for the opportunity to participate in an essay competition that pays tribute to him.” 

Conor Matthews studied Film and Animation at Dundalk Institute of Technology, later winning a scholarship to attend the Irish Film School, taught by Oscar Nominee John Boorman. Conor's previous acknowledgements include the Jim Craven Poetry Award, becoming a contributing author to the DKIT writers group anthology book No Bother, led by writer Ferdia MacAnna, and taking part in a writers group held by playwright Jimmy Murphy and Glass Mask Theatre at Smock Alley. Conor lives in Kildare with his long-term partner and their dogs, Poppy and Roscoe. His website, conormatthewswriter.com, links to his work.

"I am deeply grateful to have been chosen as joint runner-up for the Hubert Butler Essay Prize. It's an honour considering Hubert Butler's inspiring work and the fact myself and my fellow prize recipients get to add to that legacy. Now more than ever it's important to think not just about what we value and but also how we can value others, following in the footsteps of the late Mr. Butler."

This literary prize is designed to reflect Hubert Butler’s interest in the common ground between the European nation states that emerged after the First World War; his concern with the position of religious and ethnic minorities; his life and writings as an encapsulation of the mantra ‘Think globally, act locally’; the importance of the individual conscience; and his work with refugees.